


A Million Days

by Tallulah_Rasa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s04e06 Window of Opportunity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallulah_Rasa/pseuds/Tallulah_Rasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "Window of Opportunity " AU; the circle is unbroken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Days

**Author's Note:**

> This is a "Window of Opportunity " AU. Though "WoO" was a more-or-less light-hearted episode, I've always thought that the experience of looping -- a form of immortality, really, with all the attendant challenges to one's moral compass and sense of identity -- would have been a pivotal, life-changing experience for Jack. 
> 
> This was meant to be a team story, but Teal'c didn't have much to say, and Sam was more of an irritant than a comfort to Jack, so it ended up Jack and Daniel again. There are some adult themes and conversations, but the story's gen.
> 
> The bold-face numbers refer to the number of ten-hour loops that have probably passed. I imagine Jack lost count pretty early on. FWIW, the episode ended around the 220th cycle.

**310**

"You're _sure_ about this?" Daniel asks, as though there is a possibility that no, Jack isn't sure; that he's been confused by a trick of the light, or is playing a particularly bad practical joke. Over and over and over and over and over...

"I'm sure," he says calmly. He's already been through irritation, disbelief, rage, and despair; has punched Daniel, cried in front of him, yelled at him, and, in one particularly insane cycle, driven him to the Colorado Springs Hilton in order to throw him out a 14th story window. "And before you say it, yeah, it's a lot like 'Groundhog Day', but with nowhere near as many laughs."

"Bored stiff, huh?" Daniel asks, wrinkling his nose.

"You could say that," Jack says. "And in fact, you did. Several times."

"Okay," Daniel says. "Let's skip ahead to the important part. What's left to try?" He plants his elbows on his desk and leans forward, as though Jack might ask him to wrestle the loop into submission. "What can I do?"

There are two things Jack doesn't mind re-living over and over. One is the moment when Daniel believes him; the relief and hope of that moment is still sweet. The other is when Daniel first offers to help. Jack thinks it might be Daniel's peculiar genius, rather than Carter's scientific brilliance, that will get him out of this. And Daniel's so heartfelt, so _willing_ , and there's always something surprising about that kind of generosity. He'd miss that, if he had to go through a loop without it; he'd realized that when he was dangling Daniel out of the Hilton window. And _that_ brought him back from the edge -- Daniel helping again, even hanging by his feet and screaming bloody murder. Jack was glad he hadn't dropped Daniel, though he'd had second thoughts about pulling him in after Daniel had hauled off and broken his nose. Still, that cycle had been _different_. It's one of the few that stand out in his mind. "Teal'c and Sam are dealing with the technical stuff," he says. He sighs and rubs his eyes. "You already translated the symbols from --"

"I did? But that's over--"

"Four hundred pages, yeah, I know. You had help," Jack says. He does feel a little proud of that. "But it didn't do any good. We went to the planet. We saw Malachi -- the archeologist, you got on great -- we talked to him, and," Jack sighs again, and waves a futile hand, "yadda, yadda, yadda."

"He didn't buy it?"

"He set up a force field around the console," Jack says. "We've tried blowing it up. We've tried shooting him. In some loops, we finally get to it. We just can't turn it off."

"Maybe we haven't tried the right thing," Daniel says. He pops up from his chair and paces around his office, spraying ideas the way Jack sprays fire from his P-90. "Maybe we didn't get the right sequence. Maybe we have to go at a different time. Maybe I mistranslated. Maybe--"

"Tried that," Jack says. "All of it. For what it's worth, your translation was right. The sequence was correct. The console's just...well, 'busted' is the term Carter used."

"She'll fix it," Daniel says.

"Maybe," Jack says. "Someday." This is one of his least-favorite parts of the loop.

"So, there's nothing I can do?"

"Tell me something new," Jack says. He thinks about picking up a few of the mugs scattered around Daniel's office and juggling them, but it seems like too much effort.

Daniel chews his lip. "Have you asked me that before?"

"A few thousand times."

"And do I -- do I always tell you the same thing? Oh, crap -- do I always ask you that?"

"Yes to the last. No to the first," Jack says.

"Oh, well -- that's good." Daniel's back in his chair now, facing Jack. Jack can see the compassion in his eyes -- this isn't just a fascinating problem to Daniel, the way it is to Carter. That makes it easier to be with Daniel, but it also makes it harder, because Daniel understanding makes it real. He'd be pissed at Daniel for that, except he has enough experience to know that things get real around the 100th day, anyway. It takes that long before his capacity for denial wears off, and everything else sets in.

The 100th day, he thinks, was quite a while ago. And it's still going on.

"You tell me one of eleven different things, in a random order," Jack says. He doesn't look up; just stares at Daniel's cluttered desk. On top of a pile of books is a scrap of paper on which Daniel has scribbled an elaborate something-or-other. It's been there the last three cycles, but it wasn't there the fourteen before. "One loop, I worked out the statistical probability of you telling me about the times you've been stoned on a dig."

Daniel doesn't pursue that. "I'm -- no, I've probably told you that before."

"Probably," Jack says with a sigh.

"I wish the commissary had fugu today," Daniel says.

"You -- what?" 

"It's a Japanese delicacy. Blowfish. It has to be prepared exactly the right way, or it's poisonous. I've always wondered what it tastes like," Daniel says. "This would be the perfect opportunity to try it -- it wouldn't matter if the cook was having a bad day."

Jack grins.

"What?"

"You haven't said that before," Jack says. He beams at Daniel, as though Daniel has done something particularly brilliant.

"Well, that's good, but now I'm hungry. Wait -- have you tried ordering out for Chinese?"

"Done that. It has to go through security; it always gets here cold. And to tell you the truth; I haven't been hungry in--"

"Okay, okay," Daniel says quickly. "Forget food. Have you..." he shoots a sideways glance at Jack, "done everything you ever wanted to do? I mean, everything you ever wanted to do here, in the SGC?"

"Even some I didn't want to," Jack says.

"Uh...I think I won't ask," Daniel says. 

"Won't matter if you do. You can only be shocked or disgusted or whatever for..." Jack checks his watch, "about seven hours. Then we reset again."

"Right," Daniel says. "I guess that takes some of the fun out of it. Well. Have you, um...killed anybody yet?"

"Yup. And myself."

" _Really?_ "

Jack nods. "I was a little depressed for a while, there."

"Uh, yeah," Daniel says. He picks up a book, puts it down carefully, and peers at Jack. "Were you scared?"

"Then? No. That was the point." He doesn't say anything about now.

"It'll be okay," Daniel says, reaching over and squeezing Jack's arm.

Jack acknowledges him with a pat on the hand. "Easy for you to say."

"No. Look -- we have allies. They'll try to contact us eventually, if they haven't started already. They're smarter than we are; they'll figure it out."

"They're taking their time," Jack says. "I know, because the first time we had this conversation, looping was still something of a surprise for me."

"We could try contacting the Nox or the Tollan," Daniel says.

"The Gate doesn't work, Daniel. We've been through this."

"We don't need the Gate. Remember? We have that device the Tollan used to contact the Nox. Sam could figure it out..." He squints. "Have we tried that yet?"

"Sam's working on it," Jack says. "But what would we say, even if we got the thing to work? 'Stuck in time, wish you were here'?"

"Maybe -- 'Free drinks today only'," Daniel suggests.

Jack snorts.

"I didn't say that before, either?" Daniel is delighted with himself.

"Okay, okay. You don't have to look so smug. You've said everything else over and over and over. Which is what you do normally, true, but..."

"It could be worse, you know," Daniel says soberly. He makes a face, leans back, picks up a pencil and begins tapping it on the desk.

"How?"

"You could be having a root canal. Or--"

Jack thinks of the Gamekeeper, as he has many times before. At first the implications left him feeling even more crazed, if that were possible, but now he tries to think of it as a 'but for the grace of God' kind of thing. Either way, it doesn't bear thinking about. "Don't go there, Daniel."

"Okay. I'm just saying -- this is better than it could be."

"Yeah."

"So...did you...do anything wild in the Gateroom?"

"Hey! Officer and a gentleman, here."

"Bored, and no consequences here," Daniel countered. "Come on, spill. You know you want to."

"Daniel--" 

"What? Did you have sex with General Hammond?"

"Daniel! Wash your mouth out!"

Daniel laughs. Jack waits for him to settle down, and then says, "Well, if you really _must_ know..."

Daniel looks at him expectantly, still smiling.

Jack just looks at Daniel, and doesn't say a thing.

Daniel shifts a little in his chair. "Well, you're not...and that pretty much leaves out..." He chews his lip. "And you...but still, there are...How many loops did you say, again?"

Jack picks up a pencil, flips it and catches it a couple of times, still looking right at Daniel. He works at not smiling too much.

"Oh, _damn_ ," Daniel says.

"Problem?" he asks sweetly.

"I just...You're bored, right? And to top the stuff that's already happened to us, just the regular snake-and-alien stuff...I mean, I can't imagine what you'd have to do, to top that. Or, rather, I can. And I don't want to know, even if I'll only know for a little while. I don't even want to _think_ about it."

"Uh-huh." Jack's trying really hard not to laugh. This is great. He's got Daniel seriously freaked, and he hasn't even said anything. And he's got nothing to do for the next almost-seven hours. "Look, Daniel, I have to tell you--"

" _No!_ ' Daniel is one step away from putting his hands over his ears.

And that does it. He snickers, and then starts laughing, and then howling. When he finally stops, tears streaming down his face, he notices that Daniel is looking particularly full of himself. "What?"

"This didn't happen before either, am I right?"

Jack feels his jaw drop. "Well, now that you mention it -- no."

"Damn," Daniel says. "I'm good."

"Yeah," Jack says. "You are."

**342**

"Did you try calling Sara?" They're in Jack's office this time, just for a change of pace. Jack's not as comfortable in his own office as he is in Daniel's, but that's good. A lot of things are boring now; he's glad comfort isn't one of them.

"A few times," Jack says. "It was -- some things you shouldn't do unless they're real."

"Yeah," Daniel says. He's looking around the room, maybe searching for something to talk about. "Um... have you...tried to hijack Air Force 1? Set off a bomb? Robbed a bank?"

"Yes," Jack says.

"Yes?" Daniel's head swings around so fast he almost loses his glasses. "Seriously? Really?"

"Yes, really, Daniel."

"Well, you can't just -- tell me about it!"

"I've already done that a few times."

"Oh. Damn. I wish I remembered. Okay, what about--"

"You know what bugs me? There's no game on. It's not even hockey season."

"There's a really good documentary on the History Channel this afternoon, on--"

"You're not helping, Daniel."

Daniel looks at him for a long moment, nods, gets up from the hard plastic chair, and heads for the door. "I'm--I'm going to go."

"What? For crying out loud, Daniel, don't get your knickers in a twist. I didn't mean you had to _leave_."

Daniel turns around in the doorway. "Oh, I know. It's not that. It's just -- I probably don't normally leave. I mean, I want to stay, and try to help, and I probably always feel like that, every loop. So, leaving -- that would be different. It's something I can do to make this loop a little different."

Jack has to swallow a few times before he can say anything. "You're a nice man, Daniel," he finally says. "Exceedingly strange, but you've got a good heart."

"Yeah," Daniel says. He shifts the stack of files in his arms. "I hear that a lot."

"Seriously?"

"Well, I'm guessing," Daniel says with a smile before he takes off down the hall.

**379**

"And you're _sure_...no never mind," Daniel says. "You're sure." He tosses his report aside and leans back in his chair, studying Jack as though he were a particularly puzzling find. "Why?"

Jack puts down the yoyo he's been toying with. "Why what?"

"You say you've been telling me this over and over, every loop. Why? Why do you keep coming to me?"

"Oh." Jack picks up the yoyo again. He thinks about doing a few tricks, but Daniel's office is crowded, and the chances are good he'll break something. It won't stay broken, but it will still upset Daniel, and that stopped being fun a couple of hundred loops ago. "Well..." he says. "Teal'c remembers everything, but he feels there's no point in getting upset about the looping. Hammond wants me to be an officer: calm, controlled, in charge. Carter wants me to be logical, to treat it all like a giant equation that just needs...I don't know, concentration, and scientific methodology. Fraiser wants me to be a patient. You just...you just let me be. You don't make me feel so much like I'm going nuts. I mean, I _know_ I'm going nuts -- hell, I've probably been there for a while -- but when I'm with you, it's not so..."

"Well, I'm used to you," Daniel says.

"Smartass," Jack says, but he's smiling, and so is Daniel.

**406**

"Well, apparently," Daniel says to Teal'c, "we're going to see if we can get to California before the next loop. All of us." Daniel's bouncing on his heels, like a kid getting ready to hit the playground.

"O'Neill?" Teal'c looks confused, which is oddly disconcerting.

"Look, Teal'c," Jack says. "It's...I know you've been working hard, and Sam's been working hard. We all want this to end. But it's...see, for a while I looked at dealing with this whole mess as a duty, and then I tried to look at it as a game. And then, for a few loops I just...

_Slept. Drank. Killed people._

...tried to help you and Daniel and Sam and Siler and everybody. It's just -- this loop, now -- we need to take a break, big guy. We need a day at the beach."

"I would prefer to stay and work here," Teal'c says gravely.

"But, Teal'c," Daniel says. "The same day, over and over and over..."

"I have lived through worse," is all Teal'c will say.

**445**

"It's weird," Daniel says, looking at Jack over his coffee cup. It's empty in the commissary; everyone's working on the Big Problem of the Day. Or of many, many days, depending on how you look at it. "Knowing that I've spent time with you, done things with you, and that I can't remember any of it. It's like having amnesia."

Jack says nothing, just keeps looking at his commissary tray. He's thinking that during the next loop he'll spray paint all the trays hot pink, or maybe peridot. He wonders if Daniel will help.

Daniel sighs. "Should I guess how many times I've said that before?"

"No," Jack says, tearing at his donut. They don't have frosted ones today. He'll never have a frosted doughnut again, probably. "You always get it wrong."

"So, what conclusions did I draw the other time we discussed this?"

Jack looks at him.

"The first few times we discussed this," Daniel corrects himself.

Jack shakes his head.

"Okay, the other 3,337 times we discussed this. Cut me a freaking break, Jack! I don't remember."

And Jack has to smile. "Okay, you're getting mad. That's new."

"Anything to please. You want me to break your nose for an encore?"

"No, thanks, you already did that." Daniel's jaw drops, but Jack keeps talking. He doesn't want to explain about the Hilton, even if Daniel will never remember it. "Let's see. As you can imagine, this is a theme that's been very near and dear to your heart." He ticks off on his fingers. "We've gone through the importance of memory to society. Myth as a type of cultural memory. The impact of developing art forms -- painting, photography, even movies and TV -- on myth and cultural memory. We've done the unreliability of memory. We watched 'Memento'. We've compared memories." _That_ had been a horrible loop.

_"Sometimes," Daniel had said, "I try to remember every single thing about being with Sha're. How her hair looked and smelled. How her skin felt. How the sunlight hit her in the morning. Everything."_

_"Because you're afraid you'll forget?" Jack had asked. "I don't think you'll forget, Daniel."_

_Daniel had shrugged. "Because -- what if that's all I get? What if I never get to love anyone again? What if no one else ever loves me?"_

Mercifully, they'd been near the end of the loop by then. Not going anywhere near _that_ again. He's far too close to his own edge to get near anybody else's. "Uh, let's see...we've done collective memory--"

"Yes!"

Jack raises an eyebrow.

"There are theories that a collective group consciousness, a consciousness that transcends space and time, is the source of mythic archetypes," Daniel says. "Which I've probably brought up before. But I wonder if there's some way we could use that. Some way you and Teal'c could tell all of us something, the whole base, so that in the next loop we'd...well, have a sense of deja vu about it. So that it would seem familiar, even if we didn't actually remember."

"Daniel--" Jack begins, gently, but Daniel hears exasperation.

"No, Jack, don't ! I know you hate all that psychic mumbo-jumbo, and you think everything related to myth is fairy tales and lies, but what have you got to lose?" Daniel gets more and more excited, first leaning across the table, and then standing and rocking from one foot to the other, and finally pacing, talking with all his heart and both his hands. "This could be good, Jack, it could really work, and it could...well, it could prove something, something basic and important about all of mankind, and..."

He trails off, because he realizes Jack's not fighting him. Jack sits very still, looking at his hands. He doesn't know what he'll do if he sees Daniel's eyes.

"Oh," Daniel says. Jack can sense him making his way across the room, and a couple of minutes later coming back and sinking into his chair. There's a long minute of silence, and then Daniel says, "Well, that's good -- I can rewrite Budge _and_ Jung."

"Probably not," Jack says, still not looking up. "You've only got a few hours."

"I'll write the Cliff Notes," Daniel says.

Jack doesn't say anything.

"Many, many times," Daniel adds, and Jack can't help laughing a little. It's the kind of laugh that's very close to a sob.

"It'll be okay, Jack."

I don't think it will," Jack says in a small voice.

"Then, for right now, stop thinking," Daniel says.

"Easy for you to -- hey!" Something cold hits Jack in the chest, and he jumps up, startled. "Why the hell did you throw a..." He looks down at his wet shirt, looks up at Daniel, who's not even trying to hide his smirk. "You threw a water balloon at me?"

Daniel shrugs. "After you told me about the loop, when we went to the infirmary, I was looking at that box of examination gloves Janet has, and..."

"And you suddenly thought, hey, I could steal one of those, fill it with water in the commissary, and throw it at Jack?" He's a little outraged, but also amused. And, for some reason, relieved.

"Actually, I've thought that every time I've gone to the infirmary since...well, since the first time I ever went to the infirmary. It's just, today, it occurred to me that I could -- wait, are you saying I've never done that before?"

"No, Daniel. I'd wear a raincoat if you were in the habit of doing that."

"Huh," Daniel says. "Well, now you'll have to change your wardrobe. 'Cause you won't know, next loop, if I'll let my inner water-balloonist free again. And...well, that's _something_. Something different, I mean."

Daniel looks so serious. Only Daniel could make popping someone with a water balloon an act of mercy, a step on the moral high road. "Yeah," Jack says, smiling, trying to wring out his shirt. "It's something."

"How long did we, uh, try...?"

But it's okay, Jack can deal with it now. "The collective unconscious thing? We've _been_ trying, for weeks. Months, maybe."

"Oh," Daniel says, and then more brightly, "well, maybe it just takes more time."

Daniel's said that before. That, in fact, is why they keep trying. That, and the fact that trying means there's hope.

And sometimes he can get Daniel to get everyone to stand in a circle, wearing black, holding candles, repeating "ohmmmm," and really, that's pretty amusing.

**471**

"Have we tried the quantum mirror?" Daniel asks. He's making a list of their options on his chalkboard. For lack of anything better to do, Jack's translating it into Ancient in his head.

"Once or twice," Jack says, trying to keep his voice steady. Jack had had a real flare of hope the first time Daniel brought that up.

Daniel frowns, staring at the board. "We'd have to deal with entropic -- no, we wouldn't be there long enough for that. There's _got_ to be a reality where SG-1 -- or somebody -- broke the loop. If we could figure out how they did it..."

"We can try again," Jack offers. What the hell, it's a change of scenery. It doesn't hurt so much, now that he knows this isn't going to pan out, either. And a few of the realities have a great pizza place, right in Colorado Springs. It's easy to find the right realities -- there are only seven where Earth still exists, and isn't overrun by the Goa'uld. Interestingly, they all have a Daniel Jackson and a Jack O'Neill at their SGC, though the other players vary. In one, Walter's a General. In one, Charlie's high school graduation picture is on Jack's desk. Not one has sent a team to P4X-639.

Sam thinks that the something-something of the space-time fabric won't allow a looping reality's mirror to receive visitors from a different reality, and that's why they can't find another universe that knows something about P4X-639. Of course, it's possible that any other looping realities were wiped out by the Goa'uld, whether or not they got unstuck. Or maybe _their_ world is the only one that's looping. Jack's always believed their reality is special.

"Well...it couldn't hurt to look again," Daniel says, putting down the chalk. He looks exhausted. Trying is hard work, though not as hard as hoping. "Should we get Teal'c and Sam?"

"Nah," Jack says. Teal'c won't leave the SGC anymore. It's an odd way to go insane, Jack thinks, but since Sam's happiest in her lab it works out pretty well. He's glad Teal'c has Sam, the way he has Daniel. He's glad, too, that they don't mind trying to solve the same damn problem over and over and over again. "If we hurry, we can bring them back an alternate pizza. They taste better than the ones we get here, you know."

Daniel hustles. "Can we get pineapple pizza?" he asks hopefully. He always does.

"I'll think about it," Jack says as they go off to requisition a car to take them to the airstrip. Really, he's gotten to like pineapple pizza. But it's still fun to mess with Daniel, just a little.

**492**

"You're sure?" Daniel asks.

"I'm sure," Jack spits out, "that nothing will ever be new again, for me."

"Yes, it will," Daniel says gently. "I'll...I'll be your eyes and ears for what's new. Everything that happens is always new to me now, right? So together, we'll make one whole person."

_Like always_ , Jack thinks.

Daniel looks at him suspiciously. "Have we had this conversation before?"

Jack doesn't answer.

**242, 255, 266, 267, 310, 483, 500, 502, 517, 621, 622, 623, 688, 712...**

"And you're...yeah, I guess you're sure," Daniel says, putting his coffee cup down on a pile of classified papers.

"I'm sure that...Daniel, I can't..."

"Yes, you can," Daniel says.

But Jack shakes his head. He's so tired. The weight of all the repeated loops, of all the loops yet to be repeated, is pressing on him, crushing him. He can't breathe. "I can't...I'm not..." is all he can get out. There are too many things he can't say. In a million days, he still wouldn't know the words.

But Daniel gets it. "Your life isn't...your life doesn't mean something because you save the day," he says, his eyes fierce with conviction. "It's not about figuring out the right thing, or doing the perfect thing. It's about doing _something_."

"Does going nuts count?" He picks up Daniel's cup, but he doesn't have the energy to smash it against the wall. "Because _that's_ what I'm doing. That's _all_ I'm doing."

"You're not going nuts," Daniel says with such certainty Jack wonders if Daniel tapped into some universal knowledge during one of his deaths. "And you're not _going_ to go nuts."

"How do _you_ know?"

"Because I know you," Daniel says. "I know this is hard for you, Jack. I don't think it's the hardest thing you've ever gone through, though. And even if it is, as long as it's affecting all of us, you're going to keep threat assessing, and cutting a path through the woods, and watching our six. You won't let yourself get too tired, or too overwhelmed, or too nuts, because of us. All of us, everyone. You're a leader, Jack. That's who you are, and that's not going to change, no matter how many time loops we go through."

Jack thinks Daniel's wrong, but maybe it doesn't matter. Hearing the words helps. Jack's starting to feel like he has a role, again. Like his life -- even this life -- has a meaning.

He takes a couple of deep breaths, and thinks about telling Daniel how glad he is that Daniel's not unconscious, or off-world, or...

But there's no more time. From Daniel's office, he can't hear or see the electricity crackling around the Gate, but he can sense it: the loop's about to start again. He squeezes Daniel's hand. "I...thank you." There isn't time to say anything else.

Daniel squeezes back. "It's happening again?"

Jack nods. "See you at breakfast," he says.

A moment later, he does.

END

 


End file.
